WHAT'S IN A GAME? PART II
Game theory: How knowing the type of game you’re really playing can inform your vision and values, and shape the overall perception of your success.
PART II: TO INFINITY…AND BEYOND!
(You are reading Part II, click here to read Part I)
The 2022 installment of the World Series came to its conclusion earlier this month, with the Houston Astros defeating the Philadelphia Phillies in six games to win their second-ever title, also their second in the last 6 seasons. Founded as the Houston Colt .45s in 1962, changing their name three years later to the Astros, the club did not even make its first MLB postseason appearance until 1980, and earned exactly one other World Series appearance before 2017, a 4-0 sweep at the hands of the Chicago White Sox in 2005. The Astros is a club who had spent literal decades just anonymously middling away in major league obscurity before finally winning the game’s biggest prize.
In the lead-up to the series, Derek Thompson, who writes the fantastic column, “Work in Progress” for the Atlantic, wrote about how, in his view, the analytics revolution in major league baseball has been, as he puts it, “catastrophically successful.”
The analytics revolution, which began with the movement known as Moneyball, led to a series of offensive and defensive adjustments that were, let’s say, catastrophically successful. Seeking strikeouts, managers increased the number of pitchers per game and pushed up the average velocity and spin rate per pitcher. Hitters responded by increasing the launch angles of their swings, raising the odds of a home run, but making strikeouts more likely as well. These decisions were all legal, and more important, they were all correct from an analytical and strategic standpoint.
Thompson goes on to frame this “catastrophe” and the impact it’s had on the declining popularity of major league baseball through the lens of “game theory” and in particular, the argument first introduced by the scholar, James Carse, in his book “Finite and Infinite Games.” The basis for the argument is that there are two types of games: one that is played for the purpose of “winning”, or the finite, and the other for the purpose of “continuing” the play, or the infinite. Baseball people, more specifically its nerds, have become so obsessed with winning as a kind of “solvable equation” that the game has become an unwatchable binary algorithm of finite outcomes–strikeouts and home runs. Baseball is in danger of extinction from the very boredom and predictability that itself created in pursuit of launch angles and spin rates.
So just how bad is it? Well, there are several ways to assess the consumer sentiment in professional sports and one notable factor is ticket sales and game attendance. In 2007, Major League Baseball, riding high from the PED-fueled, record-breaking, home run explosion of the late 90s and early 00s, actually set an all-time attendance record, drawing nearly 80 million fans to the ballpark that season. This achievement was a more than 30% increase over the first full 162-game season back from the players’ union strike a decade earlier. During this period Barry Bonds became the all-time Home Run King, Derek Jeter and the New York Yankees enjoyed a dynasty period, winning 3 titles, the Boston Red Sox broke the 86-year long “curse of the bambino,” and even the 1993 expansion Colorado Rockies had made their first-ever world series appearance. There was a lot of optimism for the trajectory of the sport. However, since that peak in 2007, baseball attendance has been in steady decline.
The trend is pretty clear. Since 2007 MLB has shed nearly 20% of its live audience. One might be quick to point to the shock of the global economic crisis of 2008 as one explanation, yet over the same 20 year period shown in the graph, the NFL and NBA, have produced very stable attendance results, and both leagues have even set records of their own. In 2021 the NFL drew 18 million fans for the first time in its history, and after 10 weeks is on track to do even better in 2022. The NBA, to its credit, set its own attendance record in 2018, drawing over 22 million fans for the first time, as well.
This stark decline in MLB attendance, to a level not seen since emerging from the strike in 1994, would be a notable concern in any environment, but to have done so while other US sports leagues are thriving, is very grave. If baseball’s wounds are indeed self-inflicted, then it must totally rethink how the game itself is impacting its ability to run the business.
In 2017 Simon Sinek, the popular author and motivational speaker, gave a talk at Google on the “Finite and Infinite Games of Leadership” as a run-up to the publication of a book he wrote on the subject in 2019, “The Infinite Game” (which I have not read). In the talk, Sinek describes the problems that arise when you pit a “finite player” versus an “infinite player.” Using examples from throughout history to illustrate this relationship (Vietnam, the Cold War), the finite player, Sinek says, will always find themselves in “quagmire” because they’re playing to win the game, while the infinite player is playing to stay in the game for as long as possible–the finite player will inevitably drop out of the game when they lose the will, or the resources, to continue.
The thesis at which Sinek arrives is that “the game of business” is an infinite game–there are no real winners and losers, competition is both known and unknown, rules change, and the game, ie. business, continues to endure longer than any company or product. Look no further than the Fortune 500. Since 2000, 52% of the companies on that list have either gone bankrupt, been acquired, or have ceased to exist altogether. However, with every new year or product release, we hear a cacophony of “finite” language coming from brands and companies–”they talk about being number 1, they talk about beating their competition,” Sinek says–and they measure their success against very finite, and often arbitrary, constraints like monthly sales goals, year over year annual performance, etc. Instead, Sinek posits that organizational success depends on leaders knowing what type of game they are playing–the infinite game–and that they possess the vision to make values-based decisions that align with this framework.
Although it’s still unclear just how irreversible this catastrophe is for baseball in the long term, it’s difficult to ignore Derek Thompson’s warning. The business of baseball exists as an entertainment, and no entertainment can survive without its audience. It’s not unreasonable to expect major league baseball to acknowledge the path they’re on and begin to make choices that prioritize innovations and rules changes that allow them to keep playing baseball for generations.